Replica of Dablon's Quarters & ChurchToday we rode in someone else’s boat. A big catamaran ferry that holds 380 people when full. It was a lovely ride over to Mackinac Island, calm seas, no wind, clear skies and at the other end we met the Victorian era.

Mackinac - pronounced Mackinaw - is, first and foremost, a tourist trap. It is also a window on all of the eras making up American colonization and progress. Settled by Native Americans more than a 1000 years ago, there is archeological evidence of this in the implements, arrowheads, pottery, etc. that have been found here. The Native Americans used the island to grow food and as a burial ground. They called the island Michilimackinac or Large Turtle. It does rather look like one in outline. Many of the current residents of the island trace their families to these Indian ancestors.

It is also one of the earliest outposts of the Jesuit missionary influence among the Hurons in the 1600s. In 1670, Father Claude Dablon, a Jesuit missionary, spent the winter on the island in a bark long house which he used as a residence and as a place to teach the Natives about Christianity. In 1671, Father Jacques Marquette established a small mission at St. Ignace, on the Straits of Mackinac, opposite Mackinac Island. It was Marquette who, along with Louis Jolliet, paddled canoes west and were the first white men to see the Spotting the BritsMississippi River. Below the fort is a large park with a statue of Marquette. It was gracefully decorated with a seagull on top when we passed by.

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